Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category

The Constitution provides another way besides impeachment to get rid of a sitting President. This is a determination by the Cabinet and Congress under the 25th Amendment that he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.

I wrote a number of times during the election campaign that I do not think Donald Trump is intellectually, temperamentally or morally fit to be President of the United States.

The process allows a President to declare himself unable to discharge his office and to delegate his power to his Vice President. It also allows the Vice President, with the support of the Cabinet, to declare the President unable to serve.

I think the kind of situation they had in mind was President Eisenhower’s heart attack in 1955 and his stroke in 1957.

Normally the President would resume the duties of his office when he declared himself able to do so.

But the Vice President and Cabinet could ask Congress to overrule him.

Congress would have 21 days to bar the President from resuming his powers.

This would require a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

It covered both how deranged President Trump seems to be now and the legal obstacles to applying the 25th Amendment to overthrow him.

In fact, the procedure specifically can’t be about politics. John Feerick, a Fordham law professor who helped work on the original bill with senators such as Indiana’s Birch Bayh and authored a book titled The 25th Amendment, goes out of his way to point out the many things that do not qualify as “inability” under this law. The list reads like Trump’s résumé.

The debates in Congress about the amendment, Feerick writes, make clear that “inability” does not cover “policy and political differences, unpopularity, poor judgment, incompetence, laziness or impeachable conduct.” When asked about the possibility of invoking the amendment today, Feerick is wary. “It’s a very high bar that has to be satisfied,” he says. “You’re dealing with a president elected for four years.”

The young Donald Trump, whatever you think of his ethics, was an astute operator. He had the benefit of his father’s millions and political connections, but he used them effectively and became an important operator in the New York City real estate market. When he chose, he was capable of great charm and persuasiveness.

He appeared from time to time as a guest on TV talk shows, on which he expressed himself intelligibly, often in complete grammatical sentences.

That Donald Trump was very different from the Donald Trump of today—very different in terms of intelligence, I mean, not different morally.

He won election as President by being able to articulate the grievances of a segment of the American public who felt themselves ignored, but since he took office, his administration has gone through a continuing series of crises, almost all of them of his own making.

His staff worry about what he is going to say overnight on his Twitter account. He seems more interested in feuding with journalists and celebrities than in advancing a program.

I have a theory as to why this might be so, which I can’t prove and which you probably will find far-fetched.

My theory is that a person whose aim in life is to gratify their desires and appetites—for pleasure, for sex, for luxury, for acclaim, for taking revenge—and who has no purpose beyond that will lose the ability to think about anything else..

The end point is something like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings stories or the hungry ghosts of Buddhist cosmology—a creature in which there is no personality left, just the desires and appetites.

Compared to non-Hispanic whites and blacks, Hispanic Americans are survivors.

Why?

The Case-Deaton study and its new update showed that the death rate is rising among non-Hispanic white Americans while it is falling among citizens of every other important industrial nation. Anne Case and Angus Deaton attribute this to the rise “deaths of despair”—from alcohol, drugs and suicide.

The study showed something else that I think is equally interesting. The death rate among Hispanic Americans has always been lower than among non-Hispanic whites, and it continues to fall, in line with trends in other industrial nations.

In the chart above, the bright red line is the death rate among non-Hispanic white Americans and the bright blue line is the death rate among Hispanic Americans.

The death rate among non-Hispanic American blacks is higher than among whites, but it is falling, not rising.

Blogger Ian Welsh says the first step to being happy is to stop making yourself unhappy.

I live in a single room, in a downscale neighborhood. I sleep on some pads on the floor. I am in debt, and I have a couple of serious health problems.

I am also happy most of the time.

I’ll be sitting in my garret and thinking, “God, life is amazing. This is wonderful.”

And I’ll laugh and mock myself, “What’s good about this? You’re poor, sick, overweight, and broke.” All that is true, but I’m happy (and my health is improving, no worries, I don’t expect to die soon, though who knows).

So I’m going to give some unsolicited advice on how to be happy even though your life sucks, because, well, I’m pretty good at it.

The first step is to not be unhappy.

(Insert head smacking motion from readers.)

Seriously, though, start there. Or, as I like to say: “The whole of the path is not giving a fuck.”

Run out of fucks. Do not restock. Life will seem a lot better.

Please don’t mistake Welsh’s philosophy for indifference to the world or other people. He is engaged with the world through his excellent political blog. He is concerned about world events. He just doesn’t let world events make him miserable.

Rod Dreher, a traditional Christian, summed up his beliefs about evil:

The world is not what we think it is. What is unseen is as real as what’s seen.

People are not who we think they are; they are not even who they think they are. People will go to extraordinary lengths — including telling themselves outlandish lies, accepting what ought to be unacceptable and making their own lives and the lives of others miserable — to avoid facing truths that would compromise the worldview upon which they’ve settled.

The battle lines between good and evil, and between order and chaos, are not drawn where we would like them to be. The front is everywhere, most particularly within our own hearts.

Be wary of the treachery of the good man who believes in his own goodness.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)

Trying to negate the Electoral College vote is a terrible idea. The effort is bound to fail, and will discredit future demands by liberals and Democrats to respect the rule of law. Even if it succeeded, it would set a bad precedent of setting aside election results by fair means or foul.

The Electoral College has existed for more than 200 years. It is what it is because of a compromise that was necessary to create a United States in the first place. Progressive and liberal presidents have been elected in the past through the Electoral College system and have just as much chance of being elected in the future.

When I look at the lists of women heads of state and women heads of government since World War Two, I see more warrior queens—Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi—than I do motherly social reformers.

The problem with women leaders in a male-dominated society is that, in order to be respected by men, they often repress the so-called feminine weaknesses of compassion and empathy and emphasize the so-called masculine virtues of combativeness and unsentimental moral pragmatism.

I don’t know whether Hillary Clinton became a war hawk in order to earn the respect of powerful men, or whether she had the respect of powerful men because she already was a war hawk, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be a respected part of the political establishment if she were an advocate for peace. The problem is that a war hawk is not what is needed now.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar was a poor Hindu with only a basic mathematical education who, as a young man, made important mathematical discoveries. He impressed the great British mathematicial, G.H. Hardy, who invited him to join him at Cambridge University in England, where the two had a brilliant and fruitful collaboration, cut short when Ramanujan died young.

I read Robert Kanigel’s The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan after seeing the movie based on the book. The movie does justice to the spirit of the book and mostly conforms to fact, but cannot duplicate Kanigel’s richness of detail.

Both the movie and the book gave me food for thought on the nature and sources of genius. I once thought of mathematical discovery as a logical, step-by-step process, but I now realize it depends as much on inspiration as anything else.

Some of Ramanujan’s theorems came to him in dreams, sometimes on scrolls held by Hindu gods.

Since I do not believe in the Hindu gods myself, how do I explain the fact that Ramanujan’s visions of the gods have him true mathematical theorems and also good advice on major life decisions.

I have to believe that his visions were manifestations of his subconscious mind. Brain scientists tell us that most cognitive activity takes place below the level of consciousness. I believe that most inspiration and creative thought arises from subconscious sources, and that the conscious mind performs an executive function—deciding which intuitions have a basis in reality.

Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, thinks Donald Trump will be nominated and elected by a landslide. He explained why on his blog.

Donald Trump is a con man. He’s also a fraud, a liar, a snake-oil salesman, and a carnival barker. Clearly he is running a scam on the country.

Trump calls himself a “deal-maker.”

I call Trump a Master Persuader.

It’s all the same thing. Trump says and does whatever he needs to do in order to get the results he wants. And apparently he does it well. Given the facts, you can either see Trump as highly skilled or morally flawed. Maybe both. I suppose it depends which side you are on.

[snip]

Trump completely ignores reality and rational thinking in favor of emotional appeal. Sure, much of what Trump says makes sense to his supporters, but I assure you that is coincidence. Trump says whatever gets him the result he wants. He understands humans as 90% irrational and acts accordingly.

[snip]

Trump knows psychology. He knows facts don’t matter. He knows people are irrational. So while his opponents are losing sleep trying to memorize the names of foreign leaders – in case someone asks – Trump knows that is a waste of time. No one ever voted for a president based on his or her ability to name heads of state. People vote based on emotion. Period.

You used to think Trump ignored facts because he doesn’t know them. That’s partly true. There are plenty of important facts Trump does not know. But the reason he doesn’t know those facts is – in part – because he knows facts don’t matter. They never have and they never will. So he ignores them.

The cartoonist and writer Ted Rall, author of a new biography of Bernie Sanders, wrote a good article about how the political differences between Sanders and Hillary Clinton can be explained by the fact that Sanders grew up poor whereas Clinton didn’t.

One of the differences between people who grow up poor vs. people who grow up middle class is that the latter on average are better able to delay gratification in anticipation of future gains.

Middle class moralists like to say this is because poor people lack strength of character. I say the difference is that is hard to take the long-range view when you’re not sure week-to-week whether you will have food on the table or be able to pay the rent.

Psychological tests show that middle-class children on average are more likely than poor children to refrain from eating a marshmallow if they are promised a second marshmallow in return.

Middle class moralists say this is because middle class families have better moral values. I say the difference is that it is easier to delay gratification if your life experience is that people keep promises and that nobody will snatch away what you have.

Bernie Sanders grew up in a home in which his parents lived paycheck to paycheck and never could be certain of the future even on a month-by-month basis.

Hillary Clinton never experienced anything like this. She and her husband said they exited the White House $10 million in debt, but there never was any danger they would have to live on Ramen noodles or live in a homeless shelter.

So Sanders is passionate about immediate and drastic reforms of the economic system, and Clinton tells working people and the unemployed to be realistic and settle for tiny incremental under the existing system.

Andre Malraux once asked a Catholic priest what he had learned about people in 50 years of listening to confessions. The priest replied that (1) people are much more unhappy than you would expect and (2) there is no such thing as an adult.

I thought about this when I read a blog post entitled How Bad Are Things? by a psychiatrist named Scott Alexander. However bad things are, it’s highly unlikely you’re the only one (of whatever it is).

The fact is that a large part of conservatism consists of warnings against acting on your generous impulses.

This can be mean-spirited. It can be wise. Sometimes it is both at the same time.

A basic conservative truth is that there are many more ways to make things worse than there are to make things better. This is true no matter how bad things are. Another is that people are much better judges of their own interests than they are of other peoples’ interests or of the public interest.

I don’t believe that being heartless makes you more realistic, but neither do I believe that good motives guarantee good actions.

He said addiction is caused by people being so disconnected from society and so lacking in life’s normal satisfactions that the pleasure of taking drugs is life’s best alternatives.

Hari based his conclusion on two experiments. One involved rats. The other involved the people of Portugal.

Experimenters in the 1950s and 1960s found that caged rats, when offered the option of self-administering heroin, would take the heroin in preference to food and water.

But another scientist, Bruce Alexander, noted that rats are social, active and sexual creatures. A rat in a cage is equivalent to a human being in solitary confinement. He wondered what normal rats would do if exposed to heroin.

Starting in 1977, he created a “rat park”—a kind of paradise for rats—in which there was plenty of cheese, and brightly-colored objects, tunnels to hide in, plus other rats to hang out with, including sexy members of the opposite sex.

These rats had no interest in morphine-laced water, even when mixed with sugar to make it more attractive.

Furthermore rats that had been turned into heroin addicts in cages lost interest in drugs when released into the rat park.

Portugal’sexperimentbegan in 2001. The country had a serious drug addiction problem, and arresting and punishing drug addicts was as ineffective there as it was elsewhere.

So the government tried a different approach. They reduced the penalty for possession of small amounts of illegal drugs—a supply of less than 10 days—to a minor offense, equivalent to a traffic ticket.

But instead of just leaving it at that, the Portuguese government put the resources that formally went into drug enforcement to helping drug addicts lead a normal life—for example, by subsidizing salaries so they could get jobs.

There is something about this that doesn’t sit quite well with me. Why should an addict get help from the government that is not available to someone who keeps free of addiction? It is like Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son. Why should the son who goes away and wastes his life be treated better than the faithful son who stayed at home and did his duty?

But this is not rational thinking. The fact is that the Portuguese solution worked. Drug addiction didn’t vanish, but Portugal has one of the lowest addiction rates in Europe. Mercy, forgiveness and human kindness work (in this case) better than a narrow idea of justice.

Don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.

==John Dickinson in the musical 1776

I’ve often heard this said. Is it really true?

It’s common in the United States to hope for a better life, including a higher income, than your parents had, and to hope that your children will have a better life, including a higher income, than you had.

It’s common in the United States to hope for success in your chosen endeavor, which, if you’re an entrepreneur, involves getting rich, but not merely getting rich.

All or almost all entrepreneurs I’ve ever met hoped to accomplish something worthwhile and to be rewarded for it, which is different from the desire to acquire money by any means necessary.

I’ve also met people motivated by mere greed, but none of them that I know of ever accomplished anything worthy of respect. Sadly, it seems to me that there are many such people in positions of power.

Our American culture emphasizes the responsibility of every person to earn their keep and pay their own way. Those of us who’ve struggled hard to gain just a little are fearful of having that little taken away for the benefit of those who haven’t struggled. Sometimes that’s a realistic fear, sometimes not, but that’s a topic for another post.

Some years ago I posted videos of “The Century of the Self,” the great four-part documentary by Adam Curtis about “how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.”

The videos were taken down from the Internet, but Jason Kottke found new iterations and linked to them on kottke.org. Here they are. If you haven’t seen them before, I highly recommend watching them. Each one is a little less than an hour long.

Part One, Happiness Machines, is about how Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, created the profession of public relations in the 1920s and taught American advertisers how to link products with consumers’ unconscious desires, and how these ideas influenced politics in the 1930s.

I believe there is such a thing as goodness, which is devotion to human flourishing in myself and others, and I believe there is such a thing as badness, which is the human weaknesses that prevent people from serving the good.

I also believe there is such a thing as evil, which is hatred of the good.

There are such things as good countries, which allow their people to flourish, and there are bad countries, where corruption, privilege and power without accountability prevent human flourishing.

And there are such things as evil regimes, such as those of Hitler and Stalin, which kill and torment people for no real reason except pure malice.

The ISIS regime and its allies such as Boko Haram in Nigeria seem to be pure evil, although they may attract followers who don’t realize what they’re getting into until it is too late. If I could push a button and blow up all the ISIS leaders while sparing innocent human life, I certainly would do so.

At the same time, I recognize that the seeds of the ISIS atrocities and of almost every other bad and evil human action exist within myself. I have never wanted to set anybody on fire or slowly saw anyone’s head off at the neck, and I have never fantasized about it, but I have thought and done things that, in their small way, were just as pointlessly malicious.

To recognize the evil in myself is not to deny or mitigate the evil of ISIS. It is to recognize the truth of what Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer, once said, which is that the battleline between good and evil does not run between nations nor between individuals, but through the heart of every human being.

Brainwashing, which is my worst nightmare, may in fact be possible. Evidently people can be made not only to confess to crimes they haven’t committed, but to come to falsely believe they actually have committed them.

Paul Graham, a computer programmer, venture capitalist and wise essayist, wrote recently that mean people almost never succeed in starting successful businesses.

There is some evidence that some types of business, such as financial speculation, attract psychopaths, but the types of business Graham had in mind are those that create something new and valuable.

The reasons why, in his experience, mean people rarely succeed are (1) a focus on crushing the enemy keeps you from focusing on the long view, (2) talented people don’t want to work for mean bosses and (3) creative entrepreneurs often have a vision of doing something that benefits humanity.

Successful creative entrepreneurs, in Graham’s experience, are more like great artists, writers and scientists than they are like great warriors, and, in a post-scarcity society, their qualities are more important than the warrior qualities.

I think there is some truth in what he wrote, and I would like to believe in it more than I do. But I can think of examples of successful and creative entrepreneurs who were nasty human beings.

One example is the late Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple Computer, probably the premiere creative entrepreneur of our time. Jobs had the perfectionist artistic temperament that Graham wrote about, and yet he was a bully, a liar, a manipulator, an exploiter of Asian sweatshop labor, a deadbeat dad, and an ungrateful son to his adoptive parents. He was a great man, but he was not a good man.

Another example is Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon. His brilliant innovation has revolutionized the retail industry to the benefit of many, and yet he is using the power of his innovation to squeeze book publishers, authors and suppliers in the same way as Wal-mart does. He also is a terrible employer.

Al Neuharth, the former CEO of Gannett Inc., entitled his autobiography, Confessions of an SOB, which I think was accurate. Yet it was his vision that created USA Today, a successful innovation in journalism, at a time when printed newspapers were starting to fail.

I think Paul Graham may suffer from selection bias. As a decent human being himself, he is predisposed to invest in businesses started by other decent human beings. And many decent human beings do succeed in business. But so do bullies and SOBs, just as they sometimes do in the arts and sciences and other endeavors..

Many social welfare programs fail. The Obama administration has identified some that succeed. While this does not change my unfavorable opinion of the President’s policies overall, I think he is entitled to credit for having this research done.

Between 1974 and 1979, the small city of Dauphin, Manitoba, guaranteed all residents a basic income—employed or not, able to work or not. What was the ultimate outcome of this radical experiment? Nobody ever bothered to check and find out.

Georgia and Wisconsin are the latest American states to discover that a Third World economic strategy—low wages, low taxes, low services and low regulation—is not a successful formula for creating jobs and promoting economic growth.

In April of 2011, a group of Israeli researchers published some remarkable research about decision-making, looking at more than a thousand judicial rulings by eight Israeli judges who presided over two different parole boards. The rulings covered Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Israeli criminals whose crimes ranged from embezzlement and assault to murder and rape; the vast majority of the decisions involved requests for parole. These were esteemed judges using their years of experience and wisdom to make critical decisions affecting not only the lives of the prisoners and their victims but also the well-being of the larger community.

So what was the biggest factor in whether a prisoner would go free or not? True remorse, perhaps? Reformation and behavior in prison? The severity of the crime?

None of those, actually. It turns out what mattered most was how long it had been since the judge had had a sandwich.

I’ve long admired Senator James Webb, the former Senator from Virginia. A Vietnam veteran and Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, he switched from the Republican to the Democratic party out of disgust for the Bush administration’s subservience to Wall Street. He has criticized the Obama administration on the same grounds.

Webb is an opponent of reckless military intervention abroad, a critic of the “war on drugs” and mass incarceration and a friend of working people.

I admire Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for the way she stands up to Wall Street, but I agree with Webb on a broader range of issues than I do with her (for example, she goes along with the administration’s war policies).

A new device allows subprime auto lenders to track the location of a debtor’s car and to disable the car if the debtor falls behind on payments. The New York Times reported this has happened when the car is in motion.